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Wednesday, November 2, 2016

Marketing Plan for a Book Launch

I can't wait to market my book. It sounds fun, like a game where each book sale is a point and you get money for each point. I've been working on my Marketing Plan for years in hopes that I will use it when I finally get published, and since I just shared it with a friend of mine, I thought I should send it to my virtual friends, too.

Most of this is catered to self-published authors simply because I don't know enough about publishing companies to offer advice on how they should help you. These are all things that any author can do. Keep in mind that I haven't actually done any of these things; I just hope to. Someday.

If you have any tips to share, or if you've tried any of these tips and would like to tell us how it went, leave a comment!

Free/Cheap Tips

Launch Party – When your book is available to purchase, you can host a
party at a bookstore where people buy your book for the first time. You invite
all your friends and family, put up posters in the community, and get the
bookstore to promote it. It’s like doing a reading, except it’s a big deal
because it’s the first one. You read from your book, discuss your inspiration
for writing it, sign copies, maybe make cupcakes.

Facebook Launch Party – I’ve been to several of these and they’re a lot
of fun. You invite everyone to come to a Facebook page at a set time and for
two to four hours, you post stuff, like fun facts about your book or your time
period. You also host giveaways. Every twenty minutes or so, you introduce an
author who agreed to participate, then the author says hello and asks the
participants a question. One of the people who answers the question gets the
book (you announce winners the next day). You can also offer swag as a prize,
like a poster or a mug with your book cover on it, or a gift that’s relevant to
your book.

Giveaways – Goodreads, LibraryThing, and Booklikes give away free
copies of books, and people read through the books and enter for the ones they
like. You might get a hundred people to enter the drawing, so it’s a great way
to promote the book to the 99 who don’t get a free copy.

Join Historical Novel Society – If you write historical fiction like me, being a member of this society will
help you get to know other historical novelists, and you can get them to review
your book on their website. (I don’t know how, but you can ask.) It’s $50 a
year. Also, you can get on their Facebook page for free and network there.

Newsletter – With an email newsletter, you send people information
about when your book is coming out, when you’re doing readings, etc. I think
there’s a way to get people to sign up for newsletters on your blog (are they
called apps on blogs?), but you can also do it manually. MailChimp is a great
program for mass emails.

Author pages – You can have your own professional profiles on Facebook,
Goodreads, Amazon, LibraryThing, and Booklikes. People go there to read about
you and see what other books you’ve written and where to buy them.

Book clubs – You can get a group of people together and have your own
book group to read and talk about your novel, and you can encourage your
friends to host book clubs. Perhaps everyone who buys the book for a group
could get a discount. A lot of authors also do Skype or phone calls to book
clubs so people can interview the author at their meeting. You can also host
virtual book clubs via Facebook or Goodreads.

Use book cover as your profile picture and cover photo on Facebook.
That way, everyone who interacts with you online will know you have a book to
buy.

Offer signed books online - A friend of mine did this and I thought it was brilliant; for only one
month, people could buy her book from a certain bookstore and get it signed and
personalized. How often do we find books we like but then wait years to buy
them? Signed copies make people whip out their checkbook and get the book right
away.

Blog Tour – Get your friends to interview you and/or review your book
on their blogs. If you don’t know many bloggers, you can hire someone to host a
blog tour (see below).

Book Signings and Readings – You’d be surprised how many opportunities
there are to promote your book at fairs, library events, book stores, art
events, writer’s groups, etc. Keep your eyes open and read your book publically
everywhere you can. Then record it and post about it on Facebook.

Reviews - Reviews are extremely important to
people buying books online, so encourage your friends to review them on as many
sites as they can: Amazon, Goodreads, Powell’s, Barnes and Noble,
Books-a-Million, etc. Be sure to thank them afterwards.

Costly

Website

Ads on Goodreads, LibraryThing, Booklikes, and Facebook

Blog Tours – For a fee, certain companies will set up blog tours where
you get reviewed or interviewed by popular blogs. They also post about you on
their website, Facebook, Twitter, etc. I
HIGHLY recommend spending some money on Amy Bruno’s site.Historical Fiction Virtual Tours (Amy Bruno) Blog
Tours: $95-$495 Book
Blast: $74-$140 Facebook
Launch Party: $150-$800 (like what I mentioned earlier, only she does all the
work, including finding people for the giveaways.) Pump Up Your Book
Promotion (Cheryl Malandrinos) $49-$1,049

Conferences – These can be ridiculously expensive, but I highly
recommend them. You make so many friends who will help you promote your book,
not to mention you learn so much and they’re loads of fun. You can also sell
signed copies of your book and buy ads for the conference program.

Book Trailer – I have no idea how to go about making one of these.

Swag – You can get bookmarks, t-shirts, mugs, posters, bags, etc. with
your book cover on them. At the very least, it’s good to carry bookmarks with
you everywhere you go so when you tell people about your book, you can give
them one so they remember it.

Book Tour - You can go to book stores in other towns for readings and signings, too. This gets expensive because you have to pay travel expenses. Still sounds like fun, though.

3 comments:

Hi Teralyn: It's been a while since I've received anything from you. I added my name to receive you blog but I never get them. Anyway, I'm in the process of launching my own book called River of the Stick Wavers, and I talked to a book store about promoting it and they want 40% of the sales. That's a lot for a couple of hours of their time. I don't know if it's the same in the U.S. but here in Canada that's what they do. Just thought you'd like to know. Good luck with your next book.

Forty percent does seem like a lot. Like I said, I've never self-published before, so I don't know the ins and outs of working for a bookstore. I know bookstores don't like to carry self-published books because they don't sell well, so maybe the extra cost is to make up for the money he assumes he's going to lose. (Rude.) I hope you get it all figured out and that everything works out for you. Good luck with your launch!

Great work here! Thanks for sharing this great stuff. If you are looking for high-quality marketing service then I will highly recommend you New York City PR by thewoodsandco.com. Thanks for great share!

About Me

I'm an aspiring novelist and a mother. I blog about books, history, my writing projects, being a homemaker, and little discoveries I want to share. You can contact me at teralynpilgrim at yahoo dot com.